Waylon's Blues

Harvest Season, Healdsburg 2007
Whoop and holler, this is my 100th post. I'm surprised I actually got this far. I'd like to give a special shout out to my friend David who kind of infected me with the blog bug. So thanks, David, even though I can hardly hold a candle to your prolificness, I'm happy to be in your blog universe, nonetheless.

To be sure, I should have gotten here a long time ago. It's been a strange summer and I haven't been able to post here every day. Still, a milestone, even a small one, seems worth celebrating. So.... yippee.

Woo hoo.

Now that that's done with ...

I can't write about the Mets today. It's too hard to watch them disintegrate, even though y'all know I have long wondered whether they're really good enough to make any kind of serious post-season run. With all that's happened and their near-epic collapse, they could still make the playoffs with a win tomorrow (or a loss actually which I could explain if I wanted to go through the various scenarios). Make it or not, there will still be time to put this season into perspective. For now, though, on to more interesting things.

I admit to being a snob about some things. Beer, for one. I’d rather go thirsty than drink a Budweiser. Same way with country music. I mean what passes for country today is, well, crap. You can keep your Faith Hill and your Rascal Flats and definitely Brooks and Dunn. Not one of those shit-kickers can hold a candle to Waylon Jennings.

That’s why I offer Waylon as one of my fav artists.

Waylon died in 2002, way before his time. But all those years of hard partying finally got to the old guy. It was actually diabetes that killed him – he was only 64 – but his history of addiction and recovery was a long one.

Waylon will be remembered for a lot of things, but possibly his most underrated talent was his amazing singing voice. He was a rare singer/songwriter with a refined, unique voice. His baritone could be gruff, but he knew how to use it, could phrase with the best of them. It's a voice that would have been at home I am sure in much more demanding musical setting.

And while he ended up a larger-than-life character, he was a legend before his time, too. On Feburary 3, 1959, Jennings, who was then a member of Buddy Holly’s Crickets, famously gave up his plane seat to J.P. Richardson who was better known as the Big Bopper. Richardson was sick with the flu, or so the story goes, and Jennings was doing the man a good turn.

The act of kindness turned out to be lucky for the young Waylon. That plane, which also was carrying Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens crashed outside Mason City, Iowa, killing all on board.

Jennings lived on to become a true country music outlaw and is credited with starting the outlaw country movement, along with Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Billy Joe Shaver and Krist Kristofferson, among others. The truth was he was only rebelling against the state of country music, which was being dominated by the docile, sugary sounds of the Grand Old Opry.

Waylon was a Texan by birth and he shared the hard-drinking, rock-and-roll and blues influenced sounds of his fellow maverick singer/songwriters. His music was heavy on guitar and hot on swing rhythms and foot-stomping train songs and honky tonk. He rejected Nashville and those string-laden lost-my-dog-and-my-girl-my-pick-up-truck-broke shit. He was the true heir to Bob Willis and the Texas Playboys and because of guys like Waylon and Willie and Johnny Cash, Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt and today, Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle, the torch is still lit and the fire burns strong.

Waylon made a lot of records, toward the end of his life more than a few lousy ones, but during his prime and sometime after, he was a force to be reckoned with, both as a singer and a songwriter. For my money, the three absolutely essential Waylon records are “Dreaming My Dreams,” “Ol’ Waylon” and “What Goes Around Comes Around.” But almost anything he did in the late 70’s, early 80’s likely has a few gems on them.

I’ve uploaded three of his classics to my Vox stash. This one called Waymore’s Blues is just classic, anti-establishment Waylon, showing how far he was from the typical saccharin country music of his day (and unfortunately ours). And here’s a medley of Elvis songs, which goes to remind us all where Elvis came from. Finally, my all-time favorite Waylon tune which I guarantee ain’t nothing like you’d expect from a country music superstar -- nice guitar riffing on the way out. I’m gonna use this song in a movie one day.

A lot of you 70's kids might know Waylon from his guitar -- that was him playing and singing the theme song to "Dukes of Hazzard," but he was so much more than that. Check him out and you'll see.

My Friend Bob

Last Wednesday morning at 4 a.m., a good friend passed away. Bob was a writer. But he was so much more than that, too. A fiercely private man who in his lifetime had seen and done and been to more places than 10 people do in theirs. Nobody would have blamed him for being angry or cynical but he was neither. He was kind and compassionate and he believed in the possibilities of the world.

He kept his illness secret from all but his closest friends and even some of them didn't know until he was in the hospital and then everybody knew, which must have been hell on such a private person. But when his wife read the emails from his friends, she said it brought him great joy. I'm glad he heard them. Early last week, word came out that if he survived his treatments, he would need a laptop to use in the hospital where he would be kept in isolation. I had offered his wife the use of my old one. But the next day, Bob was gone. He was a friend, yes, but also a mentor and someone to rely on for advice and counsel. He was one of the truly decent human beings I've ever known. I will miss him.

I wrote this the night he died.


I spent all day Tuesday working on my old laptop. I was getting it ready for Bob.

Knowing Bob’s security concerns, I wanted to make sure it was completely clean of viruses and spyware and and loaded with the best anti-spam and spyware programs. It wasn’t a grim task for me but a happy one. Most of the time there’s nothing we can really do for our friends in need, I mean we can offer them support and encouragement and a shoulder to cry on. We can give them money. But it never seems like you're doing anything real. The laptop was something concrete and I felt good about it.

I couldn’t sleep last night. The cold, perhaps? A fierce wind that was blowing over the mountain? Who the fuck knows? Even the Ambien didn’t help.

Just after four, the wind kicked up, blew a bedroom window shut. The one next to my bed. It was loud as hell. I woke up. The wind was howling. It gets dark out here in the country. Some nights darker than others.

A lot of people thought Bob and I had known each other forever but the truth was I hardly knew him. I knew Nancy first. We once worked together at the Red Cross. What’s important is that Bob treated me like an old friend. He was a mentor but not the way we usually think of mentors, though I think maybe we should. The first time we met, he embraced me and told me I had a good heart. This was after five minutes.

He never ended a correspondence or a conversation without a word of encouragement or endearment. I think he did this for everyone he knew but each word, each sentiment was different, thought out, unique to the person. That is a rare gift.

He had a way of taming cynicism. For a guy who could embrace conspiracy theories, this might seem like an oxymoron. But truths were truths to Bob. They could be awful truths but they were there, to be examined out in the open. It was the only way you could learn and grow and make the world a better place.

More than anyone I’ve ever met, Bob believed in the human spirit. He was a true believer, in us. If you knew what he knew, saw what he saw, you might think he was naïve or crazy. You might not understand how he could be so sure of the goodness of people. But he was. And in this way, though I think he would disagree with me, he was truly pure of heart. I ask you: is there a better legacy one man can leave than his love for life?

I tried to write something earlier. Like others on our community writer's board, I had nothing. Just emptiness and pain and utter sadness. I feel selfish and guilty too for I know this loss is not my own, not just mine. I don’t want to wallow in it. But I know Bob understands. I’m only human.

I’ve been in bed sick with a cold for several days. I planned on staying in again today. Closing my eyes, staying under the covers, and trying to forget that the world is short one very incredible soul.

But I got up and got dressed and drove to a movie theater and got a ticket for 3:10 to Yuma.

The theater was practically empty and I got a seat with nobody in front of me. Bob loved Deadwood and I thought going to a Western, written by writers Bob admired (Derek Haas and Michael Brandt) would be a fitting tribute.

And so I watched the movie in the dark and all the time, in the back of my mind were thoughts of Bob and how much he would have dug it. And when the credits rolled, I stayed until the end and I cried. I cried for me and Bob and our collective loss and every fucking shitty thing that life throws at us before we’re ready for it, before we’re wise enough to deal with it with grace and dignity.

How do you measure the loss of someone you love? You can’t. You just live with it. It’s the hardest thing I think, this idea that life goes on long after our loved ones are gone, long after we’re gone, too. The Earth spins. Shit happens. Time marches on. We live, we die and then one hundred thousand million somebody else’s starts it all over again.

Except for days like today.

On days like today, on rare days like today, time stops.

You Sweep, We Sweep

I've been traveling again, this time it's back to Los Angeles for a wedding and other bits of business. I have some thoughts about traveling, especially about driving and drivers, but will leave those for when I return to wine country.

Right now, I want to talk about baseball. I know I practically wrote off my Mets last week. Despite their recent turn-around, I still wonder if they have what it takes to make a serious World Series run. Still, I'm feeling pretty good right now.

Last we spoke, the Mets had lost four straight to the Phillies, the NL East's second-place team. The Mets win two of those four and the race is all but over but instead, they leave Philly beaten and embarrassed and only two games back. Worse, they were about to face the Braves, their nemesis. The same Braves who had won every series from the Mets so far this year.

Well, the ship seems to have been righted. Pedro's back and Endy's back and so, it seems, are the Mets who went into Atlanta and swept those bad boys and did it convincingly. And after taking the first two against the mediocre Reds in Cinci, put together their first five-game winning streak of the season. Whew. If that weren't enough, they came back to New York and swept the lowly Astros.

Say what you will about all three clubs, but during this streak of winning eight-of-nine games, the Mets beat John Smoltz, Tim Hudson, Aaron Harang and Roy Oswalt, not a push-over in that bunch, no sir. You tell me if it's a coincidence that Pedro Martinez returned and won both of his starts, his first two victories since last season.

Ah, but there is no rest for the weary. Six games ahead against those same Phillies and Braves. The Mets can bury them with a strong showing, putting their focus on the postseason instead of a down-to-the-wire race.

We're about to see really what Mets team is for real this season and whether the newfound confidence is an illusion or the start of something big.

Stay tuned ...

Mets Meltdown

As I write this, my Mets are having an epic meltdown, the likes of which their fans used to be used to but haven't seen much of since David, Jose and Omar came to Flushing.

Trailing 5-0 in to the Phillies, who have beaten the Mets in six straight games, they managed to find a way to tie it at 5-5. Then with two outs in the fifth, the damn Phillies scored three fucking times. Three fucking times, all on shitty little bloop hits. Not a hard-hit ball among them.

What gives? Are the Mets just not that good? Or is this an anomaly no team avoids in a long season?

Long, dramatic pause.

I think these Mets are just not that good.

There.

I said it.

I'm serious. They seem to have no sense of urgency. No focus. None of the swagger that they used to march through the league last season and come within one inning of going to the World Series.

I don't know who's to blame for this swoon in attitude. Maybe it's the loss of Pedro Martinez, the number one motivator, the one guy in the clubhouse who doesn't speak softly. Maybe it's Willie Randolph, the even-keeled manager who expects his players to play like they've been around the bases a time or two. Maybe it's just the alignment of the fucking stars.

Whatever it is, the Mets have just slid back to the pack. If they don't find a way to come back and win today, they will have a scant two-game lead over the Phillies with the Braves bearing down behind them. And speaking of those Braves, they're up next for the Mets. If ever there were three must-win games this season, the Amazin's are staring them right in the face.

This isn't the time of the season to lose your drive.

It's get right or go home time.

Though I fear that if they don't have "it" now, it's too late to fine it.

I hope they prove me wrong.

Remembering Katrina

Over Me
Two years ago tomorrow, Hurricane Katrina was finally blowing clear of New Orleans. But the destruction and death left in its wake, well we're still not over it yet. Nearly 2,000 people died as a result of the storm countless others were left homeless and continue to drift through the unnavigable maze of trying to get back a little of what they lost. If anything, the storm and the aftermath highlighted the incompetence of the current U.S. President, who rewarded dozens of important government jobs based on patronage and not on experience. Which is why the most pertinent job skill on the resume of the knucklehead he appointed to run FEMA was as executive director of an Arabian horse association (from which he was forced to resign).

I don't know enough about the politics of this to know how much the local government was to blame vs. the feds. I know mistakes were made and people died and one of the greatest cities ever was laid to waste -- and some say may never comeback. I also know that New Orleans was fucked up some before Katrina. I still harbor hope that somehow, some way the lessons learned on the local, state and national levels will get learned but good. Maybe it will eventually translate into making places like New Orleans better and fixing the problems of poverty and joblessness and all those other things that continue leave a good portion of our own in hopeless despair, the kind of hopelessness that makes them wonder if help will come when they call for it, not when. Alas, that hope is tenuous at best. But I'm trying to keep it alive.

My friend and fellow blogger, UBM has been streaming Katrina videos and tunes all week. Surf on over and check them out.

On this solemn moment of remembrance, I've uploaded a couple of my favorite songs to my Vox stash. The first is from the live concert for Katrina that aired last year (and is available on iTunes). Norah Jones gets a lot of flack (I've heard her called "snorer" Jones) but I think she's got a little something going on, and she has the proper musical genes. Sometimes it comes out like on this tune though I'm betting 10 years from now, she tears this song up in a way she doesn't do here.

And here's John Hiatt's classic "Feels Like Rain." One of the best New Orleans songs I've heard from a guy from Indiana. You can not listen to the first guitar lines of this song and not melt into it. Come on, I dare you.

The Boss is Back

Bagaduce Bay. Castine, Maine 2007
I'm a suburban girl from New York. I'm of that age when the first rock radio I ever listened to was an AM station, the first record I ever played was an actual record. Sharing my tunes meant spending a little extra on those black and gold Maxell tapes. Dropping the needle on the right track and staying right there, finger poised on the stop button until it finished playing. It was an art stopping the tape right and rewinding it just enough so one song would roll proper into the next. Touch-and-go if the tape wouldn't run out before the last tune was recorded. I know y'all know what I'm talking about.

Some of you anyway.

Yep, there I was on a fall day in 1978 or '79 in Izzy Smith's bedroom drinking soda pop and listening to some tunes. No, it wasn't like that. Izzy was the cool-ass audio geek of our clique of orphans, the kid that had the sweet stereo system who looked down on the hand-me-down RCA shit. Like what I had. The one with the needle that put more grooves in my vinyl than it was supposed to have. Pop, click used to not be sound effects.

Izzy was a real radio snob. This cat listened to FM radio, you dig? And he was a class below me, too. As big a pain in the ass he was, though, I had to give him credit -- he had some serious good musical taste. Most of what he played, I liked. And, I'm pained to say this now, but most of it I'd never even heard before. Look, I knew a little bit. Knew who the Who and the Stones were and stuff and a little bit of Dylan. You know, the Blowin' in the Wind Dylan. Not the Subterranean Homesick Blues electric kick-ass Dylan. I know. For shame on me.

Anyway, back to Izzy's bedroom. He kept his records in ABC order and he kept 'em nice and clean. Not like me. I'd stack up two, three records on my player and let 'em roll and leave 'em that way. Put 'em in the wrong sleeve. Hell, I wrote all over my Michael Jackson records. This was MJ when he was still black, that old Motown stuff. I can't even look at those records anymore, thinking how much they'd be worth if I didn't write "I love you, Michael" on 'em. (Whatever you're thinking right now isn't half as bad as what I'm thinking about myself). I had some Sugar Hill Gang. I had some Stevie Wonder and some Grandmaster Flash, and a couple of Sly and P-funk 45's. And some stuff I don't even dare mention in public. I'd listen to my Dad's dixieland records, his Bessie Smith, Tony Bennett and Sinatra stuff. But the disc that Izzy Smith spun that day. Now that was something new.

I'll never forget it, that feeling listening to the opening bars to the opening song on Born to Run. That kind of shit changes a girl's life. I am telling you. Come on now: The screen door slams/ Mary's dress waves/ Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays/ Roy Orbison singin' for the lonely/ Hey, that's me and I want you only/ Don't turn me home again I just can't face myself alone again ...

You got to be kidding me. It was magic. This hot guy in a floppy haircut and a scraggly beard with a voice that still makes my knees go weak. And underneath those words, this piano line that just cuts straight on through to your heart, a blast of harmonica and fuck me if that's not an electric guitar.

Lying out there like a killer in the sun / I know it's late but we can make it if we run

There are moments in a teenager's life that you do not forget. Ever. I'm not talking about the serious shit, the living and dying and dealing with the real world shit. I'm talking about those metaphysical line-crossing you-ain't-alone-in-this-world kind of shit. I am not ashamed to say that hearing the opening bars to "Thunder Road" was one of those for me.

The crazy part was it was only the beginning. On that album alone, "She's the One," "Backstreets," "Meeting Across the River," the title cut and the ripping and roaring "Jungleland." Just thinking about it now makes the hair on my neck stand up.

You want a perfect rock and roll album, spin yourself Born to Run. I swear it's like a rock opera but without the pretentiousness of rock opera rock. Not that there's anything wrong with Quadrophenia but I prefer the Jersey version. (No disrespect to Pete T and The Who either.)

The Boss gets a bad rap in some parts for the way he supposedly orchestrated his career, one calculating move after another. But the truth is the man can write music and nobody plays a longer and stronger show -- four-plus hours of hard-rocking, paint-peeling, sweat-flying playing makes laying down your 45 bucks seem like a bargain. Oh, sure, he's had his share of clunkers but pound-for-pound, it's hard to argue with his hallowed place in American rock and roll history, a spot he's carved out all for himself, forget the comparisons to Dylan and Woody Guthrie and God knows who else. Nah, Bruce is Bruce and the next generation is gonna be talking about when the next Springsteen will come along. It's gonna be a long wait I bet.

The occasion of my homage to Bruce is the upcoming release of a new album that marks his first complete studio recording with the E-Street Band in more years than I can count. For one week only, iTunes is making the single "Radio Nowhere" available for free.

From your front porch to my front seat/ The door is open but the ride it ain't free

If you want to sample it first, I got it streaming here up on my Vox stash and I must say it definitely rocks. Guess you can go home again.

For you old fogies like me, I'm also streaming Thunder Road from the aforementioned Born to Run disc. And here's a shout out to my old high school pal, Izzy Smith, for turning me onto The Boss.

Thanks, Izzy, wherever you are. You rock.

So Mary climb in / It's a town full of losers and I'm pulling out of here to win

S.O.L. Been Gone

I've been gone on vacation in a place where, believe it or not, I had no cell phone and no internet for days. No t.v. either. I thought I would go through withdrawal but I discovered there are pursuits that have nothing to do with plugging something into an outlet.

It's good to be back and I promise to make up for my post-less three weeks. So much to talk about and so little time.

I just need a few days to get over my vacation. In the meantime, here's my version of a vacation slide show, virtual style. Drink up the atmosphere. I'll check in soon on the MLB pennant races and preseason football and offer a small musical interlude in between.